34 • vermont lifedegree in multimedia at Champlain,and the following year, she starteda technology-focused version ofthe Governor’s Institute, a summerprogram for high school students. Foreight days at Champlain’s campus, shewas surrounded by smart teenagerscoding websites and creating graphicsand videos. “And they loved videogames,” she said. “They jury-riggedthe labs at the school so they couldplay all these games, and it was reallyinteresting to me how youth werepushing into this field beyond whatwas available for them to learn.”Then, in 2002, DeMarle met withPerry to pitch her idea for a videogame degree program. Since therewere very few comparable programsat other schools, traditional marketresearch wouldn’t have been fruitful.

Instead, Perry used his 48-hour-
decision-making rule. “It was clear
e-gaming was mushrooming on the
recreational side, but what really
captured my imagination was that
military and corporate training, via
simulations, was beginning to go
wild in terms of demand,” he said.

“Within 48 hours, I told Ann it wasa go-ahead situation and she neededto go through the normal process ofa new program. But she had my fullsupport.”Perry was accustomed toempowering his staff to get biginitiatives started. When he served onthe graduate faculty at WashingtonUniversity, in St. Louis, he had talkedwith executives of corporations, suchas McDonnell Douglas and Monsanto,and learned how they were eliminatingtraditional corporate hierarchiesand decentralizing decision-making.

“When I came to Vermont, thoselessons got me to think more abouthow to support people on the firingline,” he said, “how you give them a lotof authority and responsibility and thebudget to get the job done.”DeMarle’s next step was to booka plane ticket to San Francisco toattend the annual Game DevelopersConference. At that time, in 2002,the conference was still relativelyundiscovered and nothing like it istoday, when 25,000 programmers,artists, designers, and managerspractically take over the city. DeMarlereturned to the conference in 2003,accompanied by Daphne Walker, thenthe career coach assigned to students inthe multimedia program. During thisinitial phase, DeMarle says meetingswere held across the spectrum “tounderstand what skills and mindsetswere needed in the industry.”Gradually, events moved towardwriting a degree proposal, a processthat continued to draw on industryexpertise and firmly established theprinciple of maintaining ties withcompanies that might eventually hireChamplain grads.

The vision for the degree was to
offer three interconnected majors:
art and animation; game design; and
game programming. Like the members
of real game studios at Electronic
Arts and Sony, students from each
discipline would collaborate from day
one. “We were copying industry, and
education in general,” DeMarle said.
“The multimedia degree had a lot of
early explorations in collaboration.
Now the whole college is versed in it.”
The curriculum committee approved
the art and animation and game design
majors first, because they would be part
RIGHTAssistant professor
Ken Howell is hands-on with a
project planned for display in
the Chicago Design Museum.
BELOWInside the Center for
Communication and Creative
Media. OPPOSITE First-year
student Spencer Hawes and
classmates at play.